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BAGHDAD - Fighters from the Islamic State stripped more than 100 captured Syrian soldiers down
to their underwear and marched them through the desert to a patch of sand, where they were lined up
and gunned down, according to video images posted online today and a fighter from the group who was
reached through the Internet.

The mass killing marked a dark end to the battle for control of the Taqba air base in Raqqa
province. The insurgents seized the base Sunday after the deadliest fighting so far between the
Islamic State and the government forces.

The video images surfaced on the same day that Syrian rebel fighters captured 43 U.N.
peacekeepers near the demarcation line between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, after
heavy fighting in the area between non-Islamic State rebel fighters and government troops.

The Islamic State has often distributed graphic images of its dead foes as it has stormed
through northern Iraq and seized Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. But even by the group’s
usual brutal standards, the video images of jihadist fighters taunting humiliated, nearly naked
soldiers as they were led to their deaths were horrifying, sending shock waves through Syrian
communities that have stood by President Bashar Assad through more than three years of civil war.

Compounding the reaction were apparent attempts by the government to play down the loss of
the base. The state news agency, SANA, reported on the day the base fell that troops there had
withdrawn and regrouped, and were fighting successfully nearby.

Anger erupted yesterday after a normally pro-government Facebook page dedicated to the
soldiers stationed at the base posted one video of the captured soldiers being marched through the
desert, and another that showed their bodies - more than 120 of them - lying in a long line.

“Stop circulating false news,” wrote one commenter under the name Zahraa al-Hassan. “They are
driving our soldiers like a herd of sheep.” The commenter called the Assad government “a filthy
failure that has destroyed the country’s trees and people and allowed ISIS to rise,” using an
abbreviation for another of the Islamic State’s names.

An illustration posted on the page sarcastically addressed Assad’s press office, saying it
had promised to “do everything necessary to follow up on the shortcomings that have led to the loss
of a number of areas and a large number of martyrs for the homeland.”